


Induction to a War

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1940s, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-24 07:02:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7498698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve enlists five times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Induction to a War

**Author's Note:**

> One day I thought to myself, "Huh, according to the MCU universe, Steve has tried to enlist four times before Erskine comes to see him. That's five times total. Let's assume the first time was Dec. 8, 1941. That leaves two more times between 1941 and summer 1943 - two times in almost eighteen months and then suddenly Steve enlists _twice_ the day before Bucky leaves? There's a piece of Steve's terror that the fandom misses, and that Steve doesn't like to show." And thus, this. (It's not UST, but if I were to post a warning, it would be "unresolved emotional tensions.")

_Four attempts to enlist, Erskine says, and Steve flushes. Five attempts, if he counts this one, sitting on a table in his skivvies at the Expo, desperate to join the war._

Steve tries to enlist on December 8th, 1941, two months after Bucky’s already started worrying about the draft. It's freezing, and the lines are ridiculous – out the door and around the block, a serpentine coil through city streets, familiar to all of them who had pulled their hats low enough to hide their faces and queued for bread less than five years before. Bucky rolls his eyes and refuses to take the day off work to stand next to Steve, so Steve steals Bucky’s long underwear and layers them over his own.

He comes home with a cough and a 4F stamp on his card.

The second time is in February, 1942, after he visits the cemetery where Sarah Rogers is buried, remembers standing over the gaping hole in the ground that exact day four years before. That day Bucky takes off work, shows up next to Steve at the graveyard with a bundle of lilies that must have cost him a pretty penny so far out of season – he knows when to leave Steve alone, knows that Steve needed to walk to the cemetery with his numb fingers curled around the sketch he’d drawn her, with the frosty air to chill the tears on his face and not Bucky’s warm hands brushing them away.

Bucky walks to the recruitment center with him, then, but he won’t go to the door. Steve calls him a coward, and the whole block turns to stare.

He stops going, after that. Comes home that night with Bucky’s favorite cigarettes, but Bucky isn’t there and no surprise. Steve bundles up and goes back out, because his Ma always said he never did things by halves, and finds Bucky at the seventh bar he tries, too far into a bottle of gin and half out of his gourd.

They don’t talk about the war. They don’t talk about a lot of things, in 1942 – the way Bucky’s face goes tight every time the mail comes, the way he puked on Steve’s shoes when Steve hauled him home from the bar, that night, the way Bucky’s mouth still tasted like vomit when they grappled their way into that first, desperate kiss, Steve’s back against the frozen brick of their building and both of them silent as the grave.

Bucky gets the letter late that year. Steve is home to pick up the mail, tears into the envelope with numb hands though he already knows what it is. Bucky comes home and the letter is on the table but Steve is nowhere to be seen, up in the Bronx and failing to enlist for the third time.

They don’t talk about the bruises Steve leaves on Bucky’s skin that night, fingerprints pressed into his waist where he holds on too hard.

Bucky leaves for boot camp. Steve sends letters every day; walks down to the post office in sleet and over ice, numb fingers curled around the sketches he’s made, no one to brush away the tears he won’t cry. The florist's son knows it's February - tries to sell Steve lilies to go with his sketches; reels back in surprise when Steve bruises his knuckles on the boy's face.

When Bucky comes home, he’s sewn into his uniform and waiting for orders. He’s out every night, too far into a bottle of gin. He drags Steve to bars, to dance halls, to Coney Island, insisting that they’re going to find Steve a nice girl.

He calls Steve a coward, when Steve starts refusing to go.

They don’t talk about Steve’s shirt collar buttoned all the way up his neck, the tie he keeps too tight so that any girl nice enough to get that close to him can’t see the marks Bucky worries onto his skin, black and violet against the pale hollows of his throat.

Steve enlists on a morning in June – tries and fails, the fourth time, the fourth F – the day before Bucky’s ship is scheduled to leave. He catches the train into Jersey, as though he might make it all the way to Italy before the day was through.

Bucky throws away the card and decides they’ll go find Steve a girl. He keeps his arm around Steve’s shoulders until they’re home, rambling about the Expo, about the fireworks and the food and the women they’ll meet, waiting until they make it through their door before hauling Steve to him and biting his tongue. Bucky doesn't say anything else until he's buttoned back into his suit, out the door and pressed together by the crush of people on the train.

No one says a word about the hitch in Steve’s step when they go out that night, Steve’s shoulder brushing the sleeve of Bucky’s uniform, the same fabric as Sarah Rogers’s best dress that they’d folded away years before.

Steve enlists five times. Bucky leaves him at the door, the last time, because there are some things that are always done alone. Steve calls him a coward.

They don’t talk about goodbye.


End file.
